There is a way to cut the Gordian knot - to tax the bad things and untax the good things. Simply adopt the Single Tax and tax the use and abuse of all natural resources - which are at the root of all these speculative bubbles.
Tax, heavily, raw commodities like oil a constant
percentage and you don’t have to worry about what the “true” price
ought to be, speculation will be taxed away in the first place.
Then, because we really do need all Entrepreneurs and Businesses firing
on all cylinders, UNTAX wages and (true) capital (tractors, factories,
etc.).
The current tax code encourages speculation in the FIRE sectors and lack of investment in production. We need to reverse this, then we can grow at 5% with no inflation, DECREASE our use and abuse of natural resources while increasing innovation and new businesses.
It will also end urban sprawl by taxing away the incentive to squat on vacant land, thereby freeing up unused urban lands and taking pressure off rural areas (which are being sacrificed to resource companies anyway - like Big Coal, which, under the Single Tax, would never get away with newly uneconomical mountaintop removal).
These ideas are not new - they go back 130 years to Henry George, who wrote the best-selling economics book of all time, “Progress and Poverty.” It sold 2 million copies in its first year - 1879 - and is still the main solution to what ails us.
The Country is not broke, only its people are.
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